"Far from the Tree" - 1st Rant of the Year!

A while back, incarcerated in a dark, dank dungeon of depression, crying my heart out over the spilt milk of the last 40 years, I decided I was no longer going to feel guilty for some act of mischief by two characters in a myth set in a garden long ago (even by Kansas School Board standards.) It did not permanently scar the very being of every member of every generation since with an acne-like shame, I decided, and it didn’t make me ugly. I wasn’t there, didn’t do it, can’t prove a thing, and besides it’s a MYTH ! All cultures have them. Some cultures believed the first woman had a vagina with razor-sharp teeth, which scares me a lot more than an apple and a snake.

And I wasn’t at Golgotha either. If you’ve seen me attempt to hammer a nail, you know I’d been no threat. I think my sins are equally inept.

It’s not that I haven’t screwed up time and time again. I have done things I wish I hadn’t, a lot of times on purpose, to hurt people, and I feel bad about it to this day. I’m quite imperfect, certainly.(I am reminded that Emily Dickinson once confided to a friend that she had broken every commandment in the bible except "Consider the lilies of the field.")

But that’s not the only thing I am, or even the most important thing. When asked to describe myself, “sinner” no longer automatically leaps to the front of the line. It’s more like “1.)One of God’s beloved creatures,2.) short, 3.)bald,4.) sinner.” And that’s my point, I guess: “All of the above” is always the sane answer. It’s all my virtues and all my vices, my weaknesses and my strengths, and any personification of the Creator as some kind of crazed book-keeper or accountant/ hanging judge takes us back to the apple and the snake. Again, if asked to describe the Creator, I’d wager “All of the Above and much, much more" would work well there. Now let’s all forgive each other, forgive ourselves, get rid of all the pulpit-thumpers on T.V. who tell us we’re ugly, knock off the wars over whose God is more peace-loving, and get on with the work of the “All of the Above.”




“When we let ourselves be defined in our own minds by our worst moments instead of our best ones, we learn to think of ourselves as a people who never get it right, rather than a capable people who make occasional, thoroughly human mistakes.”
----Rabbi Harold Kushner


“Why don’t you learn from your mistakes? This time, try just assuming you’re not a worthless piece of shit and get on with your life, and see how that works out.”
--------Spider Robinson